3. Conditions or Qualities requisite for the Exercise of the Care of Souls.

The requisites or necessary means are these:

1. Health. The details of the care of souls are neither necessarily nor generally dangerous to health, if the parish is not too large: A measure of physical force and a good constitution are, however, necessary. But, in general, he who can bear the burden of preaching has sufficient physical ability for the care of souls. There may, however, be exceptions, and one should examine himself well as to this point when he is examining his call to the pastorate, which is not divisible in itself.

2. A certain presence of mind, which ministers possess in different degrees, but which may be in a greater or less measure acquired, and which very often is no other than presence of heart, or what this supplies.

3. Psychological Knowledge. Many put logic in the place of psychology, which is a great evil. Logic is rectilinear; it cuts its way, it traverses moral facts; psychology is sinuous and flexible. The psychology of books is very useful as the basis of research, but it is nothing without experience and without study of one's self. To know one's self well is a means of thus knowing others; although we should be prepared for a strong encounter with moral combinations which we have not anticipated, which might have seemed impossible, on which account we should study facts in the facts themselves, with candor and docility.

4. Knowledge of the Parish.-The parish is not an abstraction; it is a concrete fact, it is an individuality, which has no absolute resemblance except to itself. It is very true that the knowledge of it supposes that of man in general, since, if we do not know man in general, we can not know him in a certain place and certain time; it is also true that this general man is to be sought out and evolved in man of

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a certain time and certain place. It is true that there are things which, with equal force, interest and engage man, though placed in the most different conditions; and that there are things which are important above all others. But it is not less true that, if we take no account of what individualizes a flock, we are not only likely to be less useful, less agreeable, or less welcome, but also to counteract, in many particulars, the object we propose to ourselves. As all external circumstances modify the state of the soul, they thereby modify also the agency we should exert upon it. We must, so to speak, ask the individual man to introduce us to mankind, at least we must not let this individual man obstruct our road. St. Paul speaks to all as men; nevertheless, he was to the Jews a Jew, to the Greeks a Greek; all things to all men. We must not strike keys to which no chord corresponds, and leave those untouched to which are connected chords of the fullest and richest sound.

The care of souls, then, will not be the same in city and country, in a farming and a manufacturing district, in the bosom of a population of simple manners and with refined and effeminate people. The pastor should take account of all this, as also of geographic, climatic, economic, dietetic, and historic circumstances. He should acquaint himself with customs, interests, wants, prejudices, opinions. He should not limit himself to certain fruitful data developed by certain inductions; he should prefer studying things in the things themselves. For between two parishes in the same circumstances, both mountainous, both agricultural, both rich, or both poor, he should still distinguish. The pastor should, above all, understand the religious state of the parish which is transferred to him. This, and all the particulars to which we have referred, should be the objects of prolonged and persevering study, dating from the moment of entrance on his duties; but before his entrance he must have informed himself of every thing of importance, and certain

details which appear small are important.

Without the

knowledge of these, he may wound, may shock, may be misjudged, and may create prejudices, which are very apt to be formed, and are very slowly dissipated. He must know the good and the bad, the strong as well as the weak, in order to know what needs to be developed and what to be repressed. We may hence see how advantageous it may be for the same pastor to remain a long time in the same parish.

5. Care to maintain Relations of Confidence and Affection with the Parish.—These he will secure in part by the care of souls; but, with a view to the care of souls, he should also in every way create and maintain them. The means are positive and negative. We shall not speak here of the first, intending to present them hereafter in the aspect, and under the name of duties. We shall now speak only of negative means, which may be summed up in this: the avoiding of all useless collision with interest and self-love, the voluntary relinquishment of his right, according to the word of the apostle, "Why do ye not rather suffer yourselves to be defrauded ?"-1 Cor., vi., 7. The pastor, unquestionably, should not encourage evil by weakness on his part, but he should not show himself too fond of his own opinion, and ever ready to make difficulty. Let him also be careful not to enter into obligations too readily, and to keep himself in this respect as independent as possible. It is well here to call to mind an advantage we have from our institutions, according to which the pastor receives nothing from the community, and the chance of dependence can scarcely have existence.

§ 4. Three-fold Object of pastoral Oversight.

We will now resolve the pastoral office into its different elements or different acts, regarding it as including not only the religious care of families and individuals, but every thing except public instruction and the celebration of worship.

Pastoral oversight has a three-fold purpose-to promote the material, the moral, and the spiritual interests of the parish.

1. Solicitude for material Interests.—If I speak of this first, it is not as being the first, but rather as the least of the interests which the pastor is concerned with, and that I may rise by degrees to the true object of his ministry and to the highest exercise of his activity. There are positions in which he will have few occasions to interfere, in which, indeed, he can not interfere with propriety; there are others from which he can not withhold himself. In every case, we would have him regardful of material interests, and attend to them according to the exigency of circumstances.* We have no reference here to care for the poor, which is always required of the pastor. Let him, in every case, avoid the character of intermeddler and intruder, and the air of a man of busi

ness.

2. Solicitude for Moral Interests.—I speak not yet of spiritual interests. There are unjust or immoral prejudices, errors of education, violations of law and of morality, which have passed into customs, usages indecent and pernicious, etc. All evil may and should be displaced by Christianity; it will not, however, be enough to preach the cross, although this should be done indefatigably, and with reference to the removal of evils, as included in the supreme end which is to be aimed at in preaching: We shall still have to make battle with all these evils-descend upon the stage of natural morality, of good sense, and even of worldly interest. It is very often the only means, the indispensable condition of success with many persons. Nor do we hereby compromise the main object; we prepare the way for religion: it brings us into contact with more persons, and gives us influence over a greater number of wills.

Christianity certainly applies itself to every thing; it sub

* Wild lands tilled by monks--priests civilizers.

divides and ramifies itself, so as to reach all abuses, all errors. Its great principles may be successfully called into action against the subtilest forms of error and of sin; and we must not say that it is an abuse thus to employ it, and that it is applying Niagara to turn a mill-wheel. No, it is a matter of regret that Christian preaching does not, from time to time, conduct Christians as by the hand, from its loftiest principles even to their last results. But that individuals may thus apply Christianity to their personal conduct, may introduce it entirely into the external and material details of their life, they must first have received it, and society suffers and languishes while it waits for this to be done. Time presses; let us, then, attack evil with all the weapons we have at our disposal; let us apply to society, with Christian charity and in a Christian spirit, means which are within every one's reach, motives which all accept, and which, after all, being legitimate and true, are really a part of the truth. Let us never forget that good is self-evidencing; that evil carries its condemnation in itself; that Christianity has not come to create morality, but to lend it the most irresistible motives, without opposing, without accusing of absolute inefficacy, those which may be drawn from conscience and the nature of things. It is very true that motives of this sort do not produce internal renovation, the moral resurrection of man; they accomplish less, but this less is not valueless; it is worth more, assuredly, than that nothing to which we reduce our influence in the esteem of many persons by not urging these motives.

It may not be suitable, it may scarcely be practicable, to attack directly every evil which may present itself. Besides that it is necessary to give time in order to know evils well, we alarm and repel men by this impatience and this indiscretion. It would be of more avail to begin by training up in the parish supporters and aids, who, when they shall have the same conscience with ourselves as to the nature of evil,